Black Country caching and a new YOSM virtual cache

On Saturday Isaac was back at school so I planned to grab a few caches towards Wolverhampton after I’d dropped him off at school and headed down the motorway. Little did I know it would develop into a full day’s caching and that I’d meet 3 lots of other cacher’s while I was out!

The first cache was one myself and Allun from the Shropshire Seekers had had a DNF on a week or two ago when we were on a FTF mission. The cache was missing before FTF and had been replaced in the meantime so I popped along for a nice quick find. It’s always satisfying to tick off previous DNF’s :-).

The next caches were not too far away and based along a walk though Pendeford Wood near Wolverhampton. I parked near to the top of the trail and had a lovely walk through the woods picking up the 5 caches there.

After I’d finished with the caches in the woods, I headed off for the Essington Signal Box series, which is a set of 4 caches on a circular walk near to an area I’d cached a few weeks ago. I started off with a quick guard rail cache before heading off down the path into the fields. The rest of the series were nice quick finds and it was a nice walk.

Disaster then struck as I had a DNF on a new cache near Sneyd Whark called BOYHOOD ESCAPE ROUTE (1) – that’s the cache owner’s SHOUTING and not mine ;-). On the up-side, I did bump into Hank’s Crew at GZ – it’s good to meet you both at last :-).

A quick cache at Sneyd Wharf on the canal followed, before I moved on to the north end of Bloxwich for the ‘The sky is falling down” series, a set of 7 caches based along an old canal and surrounding area. We’d totally failed to spot this series on the map before as all but one of the caches have exactly the same dummy co-ords, so it just look like one cache on the map!

Needless to say, I got my bike out of the Jeep like we always do for canal based caches. A had great fun travelling between the caches on a deserted towpath and then stopping to work out the co-ords of the next cache at each previous cache. All too soon I was back at the Jeep with the series completed.

Next on my list was two quick caches round the corner at Izaak Walton pool, a nice looking fishing pool. Nothing much to report here as they were both quick and easy finds.

I then headed off to the Pelsall area for all the new andynelaine caches that had come out recently. After I’d done a few of them I got an almighty shock. I’ll quote from my cache log:

As I got back to the Jeep I was sat checking my GPSr to work out which cache to go for next when there was an almighty bang from behind me. It scared the bejesus out of me to say the least!

A car had just gone past and I wondered if he’d clipped the Jeep as he was passing. I got out to check and all was ok. The only other thing it could be was a tyre. The Jeep ones were fine so I had a check of my bike in the back. Sure enough the back tyre was flat as a pancake. How odd though for that to happen as it was not moving and was nowhere near anything sharp which might have caused a sudden explosion.

When I’d recovered enough to drive 😉 I headed off for more caches in the area. That’s when the second bizarre / funny thing happened:

On the way to this one I was sure a blue car had started following me as every turn I made, they did too. I stopped to check my GPSr for the footpath to a nearby cache and the blue car pulled up behind me too. Oh no, I’ve not cut someone up and they have been following me to have words or something have I? I didn’t think so and thankfully spotted it was Des and Bren, on their way to the same caches as I was on my way to.

Great to meet Des and Bren again. We ended up doing the next 6 caches together, although they had already found the last two, so just tagged along as we were chatting anyway :-). Along the way we also bumped into the thurs night gang who were just arriving at a cache we’d just done.

They kindly gave me the co-ords of the new YOSM virtual cache location which was not too far away. A quick check on my GPSr revealed a few other new caches in that area so I decided to head off there next as it would leave me not too far from the M6 and the journey northbound to home.

On the way I grabbed a few quick and easy drive-by’s and a cache on a short walk.

I parked as close as I could to the YOSM cache and got out of the Jeep to take the required photo of my GPSr with the trigpoint. All well and good, but I could not find the trig point anywhere! I then realised it was actually a flat concrete trig plate I was looking for and that I’d parked right on top of it – doh! I moved the Jeep back a bit and all was revealed.

Once I’d finished with the YOSM cache I headed off into the park over the road for the three new caches there. Some tricky hides on these which had me searching for a few moments and all good fun. The last one of the three had this amazing view over most of Birmingham, including the city centre :-).

I decided I better head off towards the motorway and home as time was getting on, but spotted another 4 quick caches on the way so it would have been rude not to stop and find them.

44 finds for the day, which I was pleased about as I’d only intended to bag a few caches at the start of the day.